1. When do surveys run?
2. Can I give incentives for completion? Can I ask for proof?
3. How do I access my response rates while surveys are running?
4. How do I improve my response rates?
5. When will my results be available?
6. How do I access my results after surveys are complete?
7. Who can see what results?
8. What notifications will I receive/ how will students be notified about surveys?
9. How do I add additional questions to my surveys?
10. How many surveys are administered?
11. How/When will my teaching assistant be surveyed?
12. Why did you add the TAOS?
13. How do I access my TAs survey responses?
14. How does my TA access his or her survey responses?
15. Why did you update CIOS?
16. Where can I access historical CIOS data and information?
17. Who can I contact about additional questions or problems?

1. When do surveys run?

For most courses, CIOS and TAOS will open beginning the Monday two weeks before finals and will run through midnight, Sunday after finals. For courses with non-standard schedules, CIOS and TAOS open during the last 1-3 weeks of the course, depending on course duration.

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2. Can I give incentives for completion? Can I ask for proof?

While instructors are allowed to give incentives and rewards for survey completion, please do not ask for proof of completion from individual students. You do have access to current overall completion rates through SmartEvals but cannot see individuals who have/have not responded. As the survey is voluntary and confidential, you should not ask students for any individual evidence of whether or not they completed your survey.

Please note: all incentives or rewards must be given to your class as a whole, regardless of whether or not individual students complete the survey.

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3. How do I access my response rates while surveys are running?

You can access overall response rate information from within the SmartEvals site. Simply hover over "Reports" in the gold menu bar at the top of the page and select "Response Rates".

While you may access response rates for your individual courses, you will not be able to access names of individual respondents nor which students did or did not respond.

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4. How do I improve my response rates?

Proven ways to increase response rates:

• Talk to the students in your class about CIOS.
• Tell your students that you want them all to complete the survey.
• Tell your students that you will read the results and take them into consideration as you prepare to teach this and other classes in the future.
• If possible, tell your students about ways that you have changed the way you teach due to past results.
• Tell the class how the survey results are used - by you to improve your teaching, by your chair/dean to measure teaching effectiveness when reviewing your performance, by their peers when choosing what sections to register for.
• Have your students bring their laptops (or web-enabled phones) to class some time during the last two weeks of class and give them 10-15 minutes to complete the CIOS survey. The survey is quick enough that they can even share laptops if they do not each have one and still complete the survey for your class in the time allotted.
• Have a "competition" with an instructor of another section of the same course or a similar course and tell the students that you want your course to have a higher response rate than your colleague gets.
• Go to CIOS Main Page (and encourage your students to go there) for more information about CIOS.

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5. When will my results be available?

SmartEvals will send you an e-mail via cioshelp@gatech.edu notifying you that your results are available. This email will include pdf attachments with your results for each course.

Generally, you may access your results online 5 days after grades are due to the registrar at the end of a term.

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6. How do I access my results after surveys are complete?

All CIOS data for Summer 2011 and future semesters is available through SmartEvals. Instructions for accessing reports can be found in the SmartEvals Reporting Manual for Instructors.

Here are some basic instructions for recent survey data:
Login as usual with your GTaccount and password. To view the term each course was taught, click the blue hyperlink 'Change columns' to the upper right of the table, select the box 'Term' in the 2nd column, and click 'save' in the upper left above the table.

1. To see the report for a single course, click the 'EvalCenter' link in the gold bar at the top of the page. (This is the default homepage when you log in.) Find the desired course in the table, and click the blue hyperlink 'Reports' in the rightmost column. You may see a video tutorial which you can skip or watch, and the system will display the report.
2. To download the report in any of the available formats (Microsoft Excel, PDF, etc), click the green box with an X in it in the upper left corner of the table. You can then choose the file type from the drop down menu and click 'export' in the middle of the next page. Then, either open or save the report, as desired.

All CIOS data prior to Summer 2011 will remain archived in the old CIOS site, and you will still have access to it using this link: https://webapps.gatech.edu/cfeis/cios_new/login.cfm.

Here are some brief instructions for older survey data:

1. Login with your GTaccount and password.
2. Click on Reports Menu
3. Click on Single Subject, Multiple Course/Instructor Survey Summary Report
4. Choose the term for which you want to see your CIOS results from the drop down menu: for example, fall 2010. Then click continue
5. Choose the subject code from the drop down menu and enter the range of course numbers for which you want to see results. The other drop down menu for "survey group schedule" should be left as-is in general. Then click "Run Report"
6. If you want to go to see the results for another course then click "GoToReportMenu" at the bottom of the page and repeat the procedure above. Or you could try a different type of report to see multiple courses at once but without the student comments. For example, the "Single Instructor, Multiple Term/Course Survey Summary Report" will give you all courses for a particular subject within a certain date range.

Instructions for directing your Teaching Assistant to locate his or her TAOS report can be found on the TA FAQ page.

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7. Who can see what results? 

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8. What notifications will I receive/ how will students be notified about surveys?

Instructors will receive emails from cioshelp@gatech.edu regarding:

• Adding optional questions for their courses during a survey period
• When a survey period for one or more of their courses has begun
• Updates every few days displaying their response rates during the survey period
• When results are available

Students will receive automatic e-mails from SmartEvals containing a list of surveys to be completed on the day the survey opens, and every few days during the survey period until they have completed all of their surveys.

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9. How do I add additional questions to my surveys?

Instructors may add up to 3 additional questions from a pre-determined question pool before surveys begin. The time during which questions may be added will occur from a few days up to one week before surveys begin. You will receive an email notification from cioshelp@gatech.edu when a "manage questions" period opens.

To select your optional questions, please follow these instructions:

1. login with your GT Account and password: http://gatech.smartevals.com
2. click the blue link "Add Q's" in the leftmost column
3. the drop down box allows you to assign questions for only this course or to every course you teach. Click 'Edit'
4. Click the checkboxes next to the desired questions, and click 'Add selected questions' at the top or bottom of the page

Additional Departmental Questions are currently unavailable through SmartEvals.

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10. How many surveys are administered?

SmartEvals will list one survey per course within a survey period. Even if more than one instructor taught the course, students will see only one survey per course. For a course in which there are multiple instructors, students will be asked separate sets of questions about each instructor and each teaching assistant within the same survey. Response rates for that course are measured per course as a whole and not by instructor.

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11. How/When will my teaching assistant be surveyed?

Teaching assistants now appear after instructors on CIOS surveys. Course questions, instructor questions, and teaching assistant questions all appear on one survey.

More information regarding TAOS may be found on the TA FAQ page.

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12. Why did you add the TAOS?

The TAOS exists for four main reasons:

1. To provide feedback to the departments and the Institute about Teaching Assistant effectiveness.
2. To provide TAs with feedback that, in addition to other forms of feedback and in conjunction with development efforts, can be used to improve future performance of TAs both in and out of the classroom.
3. To provide TAs with evidence of teaching effectiveness than can be used as part of their academic and non-academic job search process.
4. To assist the Institute in complying with the University System of Georgia Board of Regents Policy 8.3.5.2 EVALUATION OF PERSONNEL: Graduate Teaching/Laboratory Assistants which states that: "institutions employing graduate teaching and/or laboratory assistants shall develop procedures to: conduct regular assessments, based on written procedures and including results of student and faculty evaluations, of each assistant's teaching effectiveness and performance."

More information regarding TAOS may be found on the TAOS FAQ page.

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13. How do I access my TAs survey responses?

Results for your TAs are included by default along with your own course reports when you view results within the SmartEvals system.

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14. How does my TA access his or her survey responses?

Your assistant will be able to run reports in the same way that you do for CIOS through SmartEvals.

More information regarding TAOS and TAOS reporting access may be found on the TA FAQ page.

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15. Why did you update CIOS?

We updated the CIOS in 2011 to increase the usefulness of feedback received by instructors, to deliver an improved user interface, to add flexibility in survey timing through multiple survey periods which more closely match course end dates, to improve reporting functionality, and to incorporate the TAOS.

For more information about CIOS changes, or to view the history of CIOS changes, a summary of the changes made, and task force reports regarding the CIOS update, please visit the CIOS History page.

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16. Where can I access historical information?

For historical data regarding CIOS and TAOS changes, or to view the history of CIOS and TAOS changes, a summary of the changes made, and task force reports regarding the CIOS update or the TAOS pilot, please visit the CIOS History page.

For more information on how to access these reports, see Question 5.

For Institute-wide historical survey data on the overall teaching effectiveness question (still commonly referred to as "Item 10" on campus, though it is no longer question number 10), please visit the NORMS reporting page.

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17. Who can I contact about additional questions or problems?

Helpdesk, troubleshooting:

Email: cioshelp@gatech.edu
Phone: 404-385-1292

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